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Coyotes-Wolves-Cougars.blogspot.com

Grizzly bears, black bears, wolves, coyotes, cougars/ mountain lions,bobcats, wolverines, lynx, foxes, fishers and martens are the suite of carnivores that originally inhabited North America after the Pleistocene extinctions.
This site invites research, commentary, point/counterpoint on that suite of native animals (predator and prey) that inhabited The Americas circa 1500-at the initial point of European exploration and subsequent colonization.
Landscape ecology, journal accounts of explorers and frontiersmen, genetic evaluations of museum animals, peer reviewed 20th and 21st century research on various aspects of our "Wild America" as well as subjective commentary from expert and layman alike. All of the above being revealed and discussed with the underlying goal of one day seeing our Continent rewilded.....Where big enough swaths of open space exist with connective corridors to other large forest, meadow, mountain, valley, prairie, desert and chaparral wildlands.....Thereby enabling all of our historic fauna, including man, to live in a sustainable and healthy environment. - Blogger Rick

Delisting »
Government says the mission to restore the population of gray wolves has been
accomplished.

By Brian
Maffly

In a
decision hoped to close one of the West’s most contentious debates, the U.S.
Fish and Wildlife Service has declared mission accomplished for recovering the
gray wolf, the predator government officials had exterminated from the West
nearly a century ago.

The agency
has concluded wolves no longer warrant protection under the Endangered Species
Act. On Friday, federal authorities proposed delisting the wolf, but insisted
the Mexican gray wolf remain listed as an endangered subspecThe proposal to
keep listing the Mexican gray wolf is sure to raise concerns in the Beehive
State since some biologists believe southern Utah is within Mexican wolves’
historic range. The Utah Division of Wildlife Resources denies this, while
politicians have alleged federal authorities are bent on introducing Mexican
wolves in the state.To justify delisting, federal officials point to the gray
wolves’ remarkable rebound since the animal was reintroduced in the Northern
Rockies in 1995.While sportsmen’s groups and state wildlife officials praised
the delisting move, conservationists expressed dismay, saying the gray wolf has
yet to return to much of its native range in the Pacific Northwest and southern
Rockies.

"An
exhaustive review of the latest scientific and taxonomic information shows that
we have accomplished that goal with the gray wolf, allowing us to focus our
work ... on recovery of the Mexican wolf subspecies in the Southwest," Dan
Ashe, Fish and Wildlife Service director, said in a news release.

But
conservationists say the job is far from complete and that it is unlikely wolf
populations will thrive because Western states regard wolves as a threat to
agriculture, rather than a key part of a functioning ecosystem.

"Stopping
now before the population is fully recovered will negate the decades of hard
work that have gone into bringing wolves back from the brink of extinction.
Without federal protections, this symbol of our wild heritage will slide back
into harm’s way," Sierra Club Executive Director Michael Brune said in a
news release.

But leading
sportsmen say it’s time to declare victory in wolf recovery and graduate the
species to state-based management.

"We
support the administration’s decision to advance science-based, responsible
wildlife management that speaks to the values of sportsmen across the
nation," said Whit Fosburgh, president of theTheodore Roosevelt
Conservation Partnership.

The Mexican
wolf reintroduction program has encountered its share of challenges, yet it’s
disappointing to see that The Arizona Republic editorial on Tuesday, “Gives
wolves a chance,” neglects to include any mention of the program’s positive
accomplishments and omits basic facts that are important to understanding the
milestones that have been achieved in the management of this experimental
population.

Most
importantly — and as is often demonstrated — the Arizona Game and Fish
Commission is committed to restoring a sustainable, wild population of Mexican
wolves in Arizona. It is naive to believe that the needs of the public and
multiple uses of the land don’t figure into the equation.

Arizona Game
and Fish, working alongside other program partners, spends countless hours in
the field working to make the program successful in balance with the other
wildlife, public-land values and uses that Arizonans expect from their working
landscapes.

Many Arizona
ranchers deserve credit for taking proactive measures to work with the
department to further wolf recovery, but that’s largely unrecognized — most
recently by The Republic, as well as by many in the environmental community.
Ranchers use range riders, fencing fladry and telemetry equipment — all of
which is accounted for in Arizona’s inventories — to monitor wolves on the
landscape, provide a human presence in those areas to deter wolf-livestock
interactions, and, in some instances, even move their livestock to avoid
conflicts.

Just as
those who vilify wolves do a disservice to wolf conservation, those who vilify
people who live on the land where wolves are conserved do a similar disservice.

While The
Republic’s editorial paints a picture of “only 75 (wolves) were left at the end
of 2012,” the public deserves to know that number represents a one-year
increase of 23 percent and the most Mexican wolves on the ground in the U.S.
since the 1930s.

One of the
most important achievements of the program is that nearly 100 percent of the
population is wild-born and co-exists with a host of uses on our public lands.
That’s a factor considered critical to wolf recovery.

Species-recovery
programs of this complexity don’t happen overnight with the wave of a magic
wand. Successes occur only after difficult and boots-on-the-ground work.
Arizona’s wolf program is showing significant forward progress despite the
controversies. We are literally learning each step of the way how we can
achieve balance between wolf conservation and existing uses of our public
lands.

Why aren’t
those positive achievements mentioned in The Republic’s editorial?

This 2008 photo released by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service shows a gray wolf. The Obama administration on Friday, June 7, 2013 proposed lifting most of the remaining federal protections for gray wolves across the mainland states, a move that would end four decades of recovery efforts but has been criticized by some scientists as premature.(AP Photo/U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service)

MONTPELIER,
Vt. (AP) -- Wolves that wander into Upstate

New York or northern New England from Canada

or elsewhere would lose federal protection
after

most of the
animal's species are removed from the

federal
endangered species list, the U.S. Fish and

Wildlife
Service proposed Friday.

Wolves, which have been persecuted to

near-extermination, have rebounded, the Fish

and Wildlife Service said.

There are no
breeding populations of wolves in

the
Northeast, but there are populations of wolves

in Canada
not far from the U.S. and wolves from

other
regions are occasionally found in the region,

said Fish
and Wildlife Service Endangered

Species
Specialist Mark McCollough, based in

Orono, Maine.
Eventually, they will no longer

have federal
protection, he said. "They
will no longer be protected under the

federal act, but the states will be
responsible

for managing wolves," he said.

In Vermont and Maine, wolves aren't given

protection
beyond the prohibition of hunting

or trapping
them.

Over the years there have been other occasions

when large
wolf-like animals have appeared in

the region.
In some cases, genetic testing has

found them
to mixes of wolf species and eastern

coyote.

This year, a
trail camera took a series of photos

of a large
wolf-like animal in Wilson's Mills,

Maine, not
far from the New Hampshire border.

In 2012, a
wolf was shot in the Canadian province

of New
Brunswick, not far from Maine,

McCollough
said.

The proposed
change to the Endangered

Species Act
would end four decades of recovery

efforts for
wolves. There are more than 6,100

wolves
roaming the northern Rockies and western

Great Lakes.

Despite vast
tracts of wilderness that are suitable

for wolves
in the Northeast, efforts to restore wolves

to the
region never got off the ground. McCollough
said there are populations of Eastern

Two Massachusetts Eastern Coyotes at their den site

Eastern Wolf in Algonquin Provincial Park, Ontario, Canada

Aldo Leopold--3 quotes from his SAN COUNTY ALMANAC

"We abuse land because we regard it as a commodity belonging to us. When we see land as a community to which we belong, we may begin to use it with love and respect."

Aldo Leopold

"A thing is right when it tends to preserve the integrity, stability and beauty of the biotic community. It is wrong when it tends otherwise."

Aldo Leopold

''To keep every cog and wheel is the first precaution of intelligent tinkering."

Wildlife Rendezvous

Like so many conscientious hunters and anglers come to realize, good habitat with our full suite of predators and prey make for healthy and productive living............Teddy Roosevelt depicted at a "WILDLIFE RENDEZVOUS"

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This is a personal weblog. The opinions expressed here represent my own and not those of my employer. In addition, my thoughts and opinions change from time to time…I consider this a necessary consequence of having an open mind. This blog is intended to provide a semi-permanent point in time snapshot and manifestation of my various thoughts and opinions, and as such any thoughts and opinions expressed within out-of-date posts may not be the same, nor even similar, to those I may hold today. All data and information provided on this site is for informational purposes only. Rick Meril and WWW.COYOTES-WOLVES-COUGARS.COM make no representations as to accuracy, completeness, suitability, or validity of any information on this site and will not be liable for any errors, omissions, or delays in this information or any losses, injuries, or damages arising from its display or use. All information is provided on an as-is basis.